AutoCAD, the world’s leading CAD application, has several million users worldwide. With more than a dozen releases, distributed in over a hundred countries, AutoCAD has become a design industry standard which is not all that standard.
There are tens of thousands of users still working with old versions of the application. If you are using an old release, perhaps due to your customers requirements, it can be very difficult to find the training you and your employees need. This article lists some places to start your search.
The first place to look for training and support for order versions of AutoCAD is within the application itself. AutoCAD 2000 and several subsequent versions shipped with a multimedia training CD which delivered a fairly comprehensive introduction to the application. If you have the original manuals and disks, this is the first place to look for training and support. Just insert the training product into your CD drive and follow the installation instructions.
The second place to look for help is in the help system. In recent versions, Autodesk has provided step by step tutorials and occasionally animations that review how to use a variety of tools and techniques.
Once you’ve exhausted the materials that shipped with the software, you may want to consider Amazon. Amazon often stocks old versions of AutoCAD books and many of these books can be shipped worldwide. If you are new to the application, consider purchasing books which provide a series of hands on tutorials. Studies show that people learn applications more quickly when they follow step by step instructions. Some books are excellent reference resources, but they don’t work well for self-training.
If you can’t find a book that meets your needs, or you need training right away, you can search for tutorials online. The trick in this instance is finding a full set of tutorials for a specific version of AutoCAD. The best way to search for tutorials online is through Google. We recommend searching for specific topics you need to learn more about. “AutoCAD 2006 Plotting Tutorial” works better than less specific search terms.
Additional support for old version of the software can be found in professional user groups where members have been using the application since its earliest releases.
|
Nancy Fulton is a technical writer and publisher. You can find more about her work by visiting http://www.complete-support.com and http://www.download-training.com |
